


Advancing

by pettiot



Series: Threshold [1]
Category: Final Fantasy XII
Genre: Backstory, Betrayal, Coming of Age, Drabble, Fran's tarnished history as an Imperial gladiator, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-11-15
Updated: 2007-11-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:41:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23155747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pettiot/pseuds/pettiot
Summary: The Wood is not a sanctuary.
Series: Threshold [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1664512
Kudos: 2





	1. Advancing

Motion freed Fran to find comfort, where her child's vocabulary did not match her thoughts.

Her sisters found Fran's wanderlust a cause for concern: today, a for derision. Her pacing hindered their efforts to armour her. Fran was frightened. Every familiar face hid behind funereal paint.

They would do no good by spilling blood. Fran could not refuse the spear, tailored to her immature height.

The Archadians advanced, screened by false steel faces.

Fran could do nothing, disbelieving her abilities. She was the practical one. She should tear herself free from inaction, yet she could not be stirred.

The Archadians advanced. Nothing more personal had ever happened to Fran, for a bullet struck Fran's mother in the neck. The visual matched the wrench of anguish in Fran's throat, motion freed Fran from inaction, but not from uselessness. She skipped pitifully to her mother's side.

Beloved eyes opened once, bloody mouth said the name. The ritual deathmask wept colour.

In her desperation Fran would have cast her armour after her spear, if such an action could have granted her authority. She made no attempt to join the fight, simply because she could not have ended it.

Only flies found virtue in spilled blood.


	2. Away With Words

Fran's fingers caged the bird loosely. The wings of the little creature were frantic, feet catching on bow-string calluses, but it made no other noise. She raised it to her eye, looked into the ball made by palm, fingers, claws.

The bird stilled.

Through a gap between fingers, the black eye glinted, watching its doom. Fran felt its heartbeat against her fingers, a flicker faster than time. Felt its breast heave. The warmth.

It calmed eventually. Fran thought, even the worst of horrors must became mundane with time.

She opened her palms.

When it became clear the bird would not leave, Fran placed it with some care on a nearby low branch and settled onto her heels to wait. Claws ticked against the wood. Feathers flexed, settled out of place. The bird blinked, chirruped once, spread its tail feathers. Its heartbeat flickered through its ribs, and it continued to watch, and did not fly.

* * *

The young man called himself old.

'Old Dalan,' he repeated, and stroked the bare stubble on his chin. The hairs were gold.

'But you are not.'

'Old at heart,' he spread his palms, for what purpose she could not deduce. 'Old in experience. Old in idiocy. It is what my friends have called me, on hearing my intent to cross the world. I will be old before they see me again, they say.'

Fran seated herself. Dalan lowered his packs to the path also. He sank gracefully, ankles crossed in mimicry.

'I intend to live forever,' he added, 'so I may yet grow into the name.'

'The Wood's defenders are not solely viera. The others do not speak, and they would have killed you without thought for your goal.'

'Call it a metaphor, viera. A figure of speech. All beings who speak have potential for poetry, and who knows what part of me will live forever? Perhaps my stories. My poems. This is more than enough.'

Fran flicked an ear. Thought of the sound of her bowstring once struck.

'Do you have a name?' he asked. 'In my city of Rabanastre the viera do. But in the city of Rabanastre they are never so young as you. Or are all wood viera as nameless as the leaves on a tree?'

'Fran,' she said, ignored the rest, but he had said. 'There are others?'

'Oh, many.'

She looked up. Trees, branches curving across the sky, breaking the light, shattering it. Fragments scattered across the clearing, her hair, his hair, his eye. Not the beady black eye of a bird.

* * *

In the end, he left her in a sun-warmed curve of tree. He came back once, long after the sun had moved on, laden with his old packs, his old weapons, and a new expression on his face.

'I will die when I die,' Fran said. She thought of her mother, and the Archadian swords, of the words her elder sisters whispered so as not to disturb the voice of the Wood. 'But you will die first.'

His mouth twisted. 'Cage a bird with facts, and it becomes afraid of living.'

Fran ignored him, which would becomes easier with time.

* * *

Mjrn sat in the same sun-warmed curve of the tree, watching Fran contemplating a small pile of leaves, pulled with care from a nearby branch.

'This has some purpose,' Mjrn said.

'Do you think each has a name?'

Mjrn tilted her head to one side. 'Only the Wood knows the names of all children. Ask her.'

'So we have said. To be,' Fran hesitated, 'literal, we expect that the Wood knows the name every leaf on every tree.'

Mjrn stirred. Her ears flicked, uncomfortable. 'Of course.'

'Yet the leaf has no life or death but that of the tree. To name it would be the name of the tree.'

'Whatever you would call it, it is dead now.'

'The tree does not mark the loss.' Fran touched her fingers lightly to her chest, spilling the leaves she still held across her body. Hurt failed to encompass the feeling. 'What think you will end first against empery's tide, us, or the Wood?'

Mjrn gave her a look. A beast before fleeing.

'You believe we cannot have a life but that of the Wood.'

Mjrn relaxed, barely. Her eyes were wary. 'Yes.'

'What pretense is this, then, naming ourselves; of Mjrn and Fran, viera and coerl. You must think, Mjrn. We are not leaves to fall unmarked no matter what might befall the tree. Even a bird may fly.'

Mjrn stood. Her gaze darted behind Fran, and relief read in the sudden slump of her ears.

Fran did not turn around.

'Enough,' said Jote, from behind her. Jote touched her shoulder, warm claws, warm skin, cold heart. Old heart. 'Fran, enough. You should not have brought in the hume. Their ways are not ours. Their lives are brief, meaningless. They are alone; we are the Wood.'

'This is not because of the hume. This is me, sister.'

'Enough,' Jote said. 'The Wood has need of you, and not as this.'

* * *

'You will be alone,' Jote warned her. 'Always alone.'

Said as though Fran had not known loneliness before.


	3. Gladiatrix

Fran did not wield regret. She drew one sword and two, trusted herself to know her armour secured, and turned to meet her opponent.

Be as the Mist, mindless; Fran would not wield regret, for it would turn in her hand. The other viera was skilled, but unfamiliar with the hume habit of brutal close combat, eyes narrowed with consideration as though this battle were a woodwarder's trial. Fran brought the viera to the floor with the greater strength of her thighs, a punch weighed by her hilt; Fran pressed her edge along the viera's throat, and held.

The viera had been a good warrior. As rage receded, Fran felt the sting of wounds, the ache of bruising yet to show, and it would show during the night's celebrations of her captive strength. The armour the Archadians had crafted for their Master of Weapons scarcely covered vulnerabilities, instead presented for approval.

Fran waited, her eyes on the Emperor's box. He did not attend these Balfonheim vainglories. Banished lords of corruption in lieu gave the signal that would end the viera's life and preserve Fran's own.

The crowd roared adoration: they chanted Fran's name, all that was left.


End file.
